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Hard to believe it’s been seven years since Roseanne Barr sent THAT tweet. Yep, you know the one.
Back in 2018, the Roseanne alum logged onto X (then known as Twitter) and posted one of the most, um, racially-charged tweets that we can ever recall being sent by a celebrity.
Related: HUH?! Roseanne Barr Is Back With CRAZY Donald Trump Theory…
The focus of the tweet was a political operative named Valerie Jarrett, who played a significant part in the 2015 Iranian nuclear weapons deal while she was working in a high-level position as part of former President Barack Obama‘s administration.
But Jarrett’s work on the Iran deal wasn’t really what the tweet was about. Instead, Roseanne popped off about the woman herself — who just so happens to be Black, and was actually born in Iran, too — with a racial comment about a picture of Valerie posed right next to Helena Bonham Carter and Planet of the Apes. The offending tweet read:
“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Yeah…
And now, seven years later, Roseanne is telling Variety that she has no regrets!!! In an interview with that website published on Friday, the 72-year-old sitcom veteran maintains she still sent “the perfect caption” in her Valerie Jarrett tweet. Which, uh, REALLY??? SERIOUSLY?!?! The perfect caption?!?! Come on, Roseanne…
Barr further explained to the outlet that she supposedly had some help from a higher power in deciding to fire off the tweet that completely derailed her career:
“The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb. The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever.”
Uh, sure, Roseanne. Whatever you say.
She went on to note that she was having “nightmares” about doing the then-ongoing Roseanne reboot, too. That is, until God “woke” her up from the whole thing by getting her to post that troubling message:
“I was already having nightmares about never going back to that show [Roseanne], and God woke me up.”
Right. Sure. Totally, girl. No question at all. Uh-huh. Absolutely. (Not.)
Of course, in response to the jaw-dropping tweet, ABC nixed the Roseanne revival pretty much immediately. Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly went so far as to personally sign off on canning Barr for the disturbing message, too.
But even to this very day, Barr maintains that her tweet was not racist. Nooo, see, it was merely a Rorschach test of other people’s prejudiced views, she says:
“They were so racist that they thought my tweet said Black people look like monkeys when it was about Planet of the Apes, which is a movie about fascism. Rod Serling himself said it’s about the Jews in Germany. It is not a movie about Black people, Bob.”
Sigh…
Now, despite initially canceling the revival, ABC did ultimately end up moving forward with the show in a different way. Rather than keep Barr around, they simply killed Roseanne off in order to allow the show to keep going without her character!
As you’ll probably recall, they changed the show’s name to The Conners, wrote in that Barr’s leading lady had died from an opioid overdose, and moved right on ahead with the series sans its star. Roseanne is still pissed about that, too. She told Variety:
“I felt very pissed off that they stole my rights and killed me. It was so stupid and shortsighted, and I don’t know how they answer to their shareholders for canceling me before even one sponsor pulled out.”
Thoughts, y’all? Drop ’em (below)…
To learn more about civil rights issues, check out https://www.splcenter.org/.
[Image via Nicky Nelson/WENN]
